These three portraits arrived in Lindsborg, Kansas at the Deere Home in early December 1955 coming from Stockholm, Sweden after Emma Sohlberg, the last daughter of Ulric's and Antoinette's, died. Ulric Sohlberg and Antoinette Wittborg Sohlberg were my great great grandparents. Their two children in the portrait above are Ernest and Alma. Ernest would be my great grandfather with his marriage to Selma Sohlberg, the daughter of Anders Gustaf, Ulric's brother, who traveled to America in 1854.

The portraits are oils on tin and were done in Kosta, Sweden of the children, of Ulric Sohlberg, the Kosta Glasbruk Factory Superintendent, and of his wife Antoinette in October 1867 by an unknown traveling Polish artist, Stanislaus Lewinsky.

In California, portraits after full conservation work

Click on portrait to enlarge and move across.

When received in Lindsborg, these frameless portraits were stored in a closet with a blanket over them during a period of nearly 30 years traveling between Sohlberg House and Deere House, until they moved with the rest of the Sohlberg Deere Estate to San Francisco in 1984. There, they were stored similarly for another twenty some years and were finally restored in 2006 by Conservation of Art, LLC in Silicon Valley.

Ten years later, in May of 2016, they were returned to Sweden, to the Kulturarvscentrum Småland Glass Museum in Växjö, forty or so minutes away from Kosta, Sweden. There in March of that year, I walked the grounds of the Kosta Glasbruk Factory where my great great grandfather Ulric Sohlberg was the superintendent. And, I saw where he and his family lived as shown below. The chimney behind the home is part of the Kosta Glasbruk Factory.

Their home is still used today for corporate executives. This photo was taken on Sunday, March 6, 2016.

The family story was told that Ulric would leave his shoes on the top step outside the front door of his home every evening and in the morning his shoes would be polished.

That Kosta Glasbruk Factory was part of the Orrefors and Boda glass companies, "Orrefors Kosta Boda." Orrefors, however, left the group recently.

Shown here is the only Ulric Sohlberg family photograph that has survived of their Kosta Glasbruk home. Their home is on the left, and the gentlemen, hardly visible in the photograph, I believe, are Ulric and his son Ernest.

The Kosta Glasbruk Factory of March 2016

The Kosta Glasbruk Factory grounds of March 2016

The Portraits' Swedish Custom Document of 1955

The Swedish towns of Kosta and Växjö began celebrating "275 Years of Kosta Glass" at the Swedish Glass Museum on June 10, 2017. Here, I am with Bjorn Arvidsson of the Museum under Ulric Sohlberg's portrait on that date of celebration.

After my trips to the Swedish Glass Museum in 2016 and 2017, it was confirmed that the "glass" in my own home was from Ulric Sohlberg after I received the very kind gift of the book, "1742 KOSTA 250 1992" from those part of the "Orrefors Kosta Boda." group at Kosta.

In the next page across is the Ulric Sohlberg Kosta glass collection, "The Swedish Kosta Glass," or click HERE.

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